And all that Freedom's highest aims can reach
Is but to lay proportion'd loads on each.
Hence, should one order disproportion'd grow,
Its double weight must ruin all below.
O then how blind to all that truth requires,
Who think it freedom when a part aspires!
Calm is my soul, nor apt to rise to arms,
Except when fast-approaching danger warms:
But when contending chiefs blockade the throne,
Contracting regal power to stretch their own;
When I behold a factious band agree
To call it freedom when themselves are free;
Each wanton judge new penal statutes draw,
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law;
The wealth of climes, where savage nations roam,
Pillaged from slaves, to purchase slaves at home;
Fear, pity, justice, indignation, start,
Tear off reserve, and bare my swelling heart;
Till half a patriot, half a coward grown,
I fly from petty tyrants to the throne.
Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour When first ambition struck at regal power; And thus, polluting honour in its source, Gave wealth to sway the mind with double force. Have we not seen, round Britain's peopled shore, Her useful sons exchanged for useless ore? Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste, Like flaring tapers brightening as they waste? Seen Opulence, her grandeur to maintain, Lead stern Depopulation in her train, And over fields where scatter'd hamlets rose, In barren, solitary pomp repose?
Have we not seen, at Pleasure's lordly call,
The smiling long-frequented village fall?
Beheld the duteous son, the sire decay'd,
The modest matron, and the blushing maid,
Forced from their homes, a melancholy train,
To traverse climes beyond the western main;
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound?
Ev'n now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays Through tangled forests, and through dangerous
Where beasts with man divided empire claim,
And the brown Indian marks with murderous
There, while above the giddy tempest flies,
And all around distressful yells arise,
The pensive exile, bending with his woe,
To stop too fearful, and too faint to go,
Casts a long look where England's glories shine,
And bids his bosom sympathize with mine.
Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centres in the mind.
Why have I stray'd from pleasure and repose,
To seek a good each government bestows?
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves, in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find:
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,
Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel,1 To men remote from power but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.
1 In the Respublica Hungarica there is an account of a desperate rebellion in the year 1514, headed by two brothers, George and Luke Zeck. When it was quelled, George, not Luke, was punished by his head being encircled with a red-hot iron crown. Boswell pointed out Goldsmith's mistake.
FIRST PRINTED IN THE YEAR 1765.
THANKS, my lord, for your venison, for finer or fatter
Ne'er ranged in a forest, or smoked in a platter. The haunch was a picture for painters to study, The fat was so white, and the lean was so ruddy: Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting
To spoil such a delicate picture by eating:
I had thoughts, in my chamber, to place it in view,
To be shown to my friends as a piece of vertù :
As in some Irish houses, where things are so so,
One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show;
But, for eating a rasher of what they take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fried in.
But hold-let me pause-don't I hear you pronounce
This tale of the bacon's a damnable bounce.
Well, suppose it a bounce-sure a poet may try,
By a bounce now and then, to get courage to fly.
But, my lord, it's no bounce: I protest in my
It's a truth-and your lordship may ask Mr. Burn'.
To go on with my tale-as I gazed on the haunch,
I thought of a friend that was trusty and staunch :
So I cut it, and sent it to Reynolds undrest,
To paint it, or eat it, just as he liked best:
Of the neck and the breast I had next to dispose;
'Twas a neck and a breast that might rival Monroe's:
But in parting with these I was puzzled again,
With the how, and the who, and the where, and
the when.
There's H-d, and C―y, and H-rth, and H—ff,
I think they love venison-I know they love beef.
There's my countryman Higgins-O! let him alone
For making a blunder, or picking a bone.
But hang it to poets, who seldom can eat,
Your very good mutton's a very good treat;
Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt;
It's like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.
While thus I debated, in reverie centred,
An acquaintance, a friend as he call'd himself, enter'd;
An underbred, fine-spoken fellow was he,
And he smiled as he look'd at the venison and me. "What have we got here?-Why this is good eating! Your own I suppose-or is it in waiting?"
"Why whose should it be?"—cried I with a flounce; "I get these things often❞—but that was a bounce: "Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation,
Are pleased to be kind-but I hate ostentation."
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